Chapter 4: Pronouns

personal pronouns

The personal pronouns are:

ya : I/me ti : you ku : he/him/she/her

Add -s to form possessives: yas (my), tis (your),
kus (his/her). Think of this -s suffix as a contraction of the
particle es. The possessive forms of the personal pronouns are
used quite frequently, so it seems desirable that they be monosyllabic.

These three pronouns are assumed to be singular unless marked
as plural. Add men (which means “more than one”) to create the
plurals menti (you plural) and menku (they/them). It is possible
to say menya (we/us), or you might prefer the less ambiguous option of
saying the equivalent of “you and I” or “they and I” or
“you and they and I.” (Note that men has become attached
to the subsequent pronoun, e.g. there is no space between the two morphemes in
menti.)

it

Vorlin, like many other languages, does not have a single word corresponding
to all uses of the English pronoun “it.” This is because
“it” has many different functions: sometimes it signals the presence of
an impersonal verb (e.g. “it is raining”), sometimes it refers to
something that has already been mentioned, sometimes it refers to something that
is about to be mentioned (e.g. “it seems strange that you are
laughing”), and sometimes it is shorthand for “the most important
thing” as in the political proverb “it’s the economy, stupid.”

Vorlin does not have impersonal verbs; we say the equivalent of “rain is
falling” instead of “it’s raining.” In referring to something
which has already been mentioned, you can repeat the noun which names that
thing (which is not a great burden, since the most common nouns in Vorlin are
only one syllable in length). Vorlin also has a special pronoun that
means “the idea of the previous sentence” and demonstratives
corresponding to “the previously-mentioned,” “the
about-to-be-mentioned,” and so forth.